He goes on to say that stating that the universe could have started with a God is not the same as saying that God doesn't exist.

"The question, then, is, 'Why are there laws of physics?'" he said. "And you could say, 'Well, that required a divine creator, who created these laws of physics and the spark that led from the laws of physics to these universes, maybe more than one.'"

"I don't think you can use science to either prove or disprove the existence of God," Filippenko said.

"A Dutch company aims to land humans on Mars by 2023 as the first step toward establishing a permanent colony on the Red Planet.

The project, called Mars One, plans to drop four astronauts on Mars in April 2023. New members of the nascent colony will arrive every two years after that, and none of the Red Planet pioneers will ever return to Earth.

To pay for all of this, Mars One says it will stage a media spectacle the likes of which the world has never seen — a sort of interplanetary reality show a la "Big Brother."

1/2) In a panel discussion at SETI Con II, the director of Interstellar Message Composition at the SETI Institute, Doug Vakoch said that the discovering of alien life probably wouldn't destroy religious faith or threaten organized religion.

"My own hunch is they're probably not going to be as severe as we might initially think," he said.